28 comments:

You don't need to defend and justify your life and beliefs to anyone. Many will attack a way of life they do not understand. These have been far too indoctrinated and brainwashed by a materialistic society and cannot understand why someone doesn't need what they do. An old aboriginal saying summed it up most concisely that the more we know the less we need. Of course, the mainstream does not want those ideas becoming the norm. Therefore, they'll fight it and those attackers fail to realize they are part of the bigger cabal that only seeks to enslave them. Keep living the good life, in however you choose. Let these negative remarks roll off like water. Others, and their narrow-minded opinions, mean nothing. Deep down, there's a large number that wish they could be as free. Good day.

Suelo. I have been reading your thoughts for a very long time. When you are not posting, I lose an important "imaginary friend" from my hard working, rent-paying life which keeps me too busy for deep family relationships. It's sad, but if I do not work 7 days a week I cannot even meet the minimal financial obligations that are legally built in: just my relatively cheap rent, cheap old car, telephone, legally required health insurance. The day that I age out of my occupation or slip and fall below this functional level, I don't know what will happen. But now it seems perhaps there is a slight crack in the sense of my doom about it all... like a crack of light and hope. Your examinations of scriptures have caused me to place prayer and meditation at the focal , most important part of my day. When I go to work, I pretend that everything I choose to do is freely given and by choice. Pretending is my bridge to the freedom of spirit. Yes, I do get a paycheck. But I affirm many times every hour of every day that I choose to perform to my highest level, and I give of myself on purpose. Hopefully the day that my heart is telling me otherwise, I will be able to listen and ACT the way you act on your own innermost feelings. The way that you examine your own hidden purposes and motives, calling yourself out into the glaring light.

I feel so lucky to have bestowed on me the DISTILLED, clear pure thinking of a concentrated mind like yours. This is not just thinking, but thinking infused with insight and epiphany. I am just another member of John Q Anonymous Public, but you have made your hard won life experience available to me. Why? How? All I can say, again, is Thank YOU. For staying here with us on this planet, and using all your strength to carve out a different space for yourself. By the way, your latest phase placing one foot back inside the world that you grew up in --to me this is the most courageous upheaval of all-- just really really inspires me. Where can the path of my life take me, if I make it the path of truth and the path of my heart?

Good for you posting this. Keep posting because you too have something to offer people like me who love reading about real people. People who get what real life is about and are sick of being bullied into living a life that is so unnatural and cruel.

Wow, thanks rebounded for your encouraging thoughts, Heidi. Ditto what 'Unknown' says above.It's a crazy difficult path of truth and the path of your heart, and it's courageous. But it's actually the path of least resistance, of clean conscience, making it much easier than the path of artificial status quo, despite outward appearances.

What a great insight, Suelo. That's exactly right. It IS the path of least resistance, in a strange way. I just do the next right thing that seems available to me at any point. My path of developing faith seems to go like a lurching leaping zig zag, landing from one lily pad to another, with much anxiety between each leap. If I were a frog, I would be the world's most hesitant frog. Yet even I, the great quivering mass of jelly who can't sleep through the night, have seen many encouraging signs (some out-and-out miracles too ! )... among which I will include the kind comments of both of you above. It feels great to break silence finally, and then to be acknowledged. In the last 4 to 5 years, I have actually noticed quite an increase in the giggling, nudging, and whispering among the naked emperor's subjects. We have SO MUCH potential, once most of us are catching on.

So much of where we as individual beings wind up is random, especially in the money-based economy. Those who are economically fortunate tend to ascribe much more credit to themselves and their efforts than is actually true.

Your life -while completely immune to randomness- seems much less dependent on it. You use your own abilities, your own generosity, and the generosity of others to exist humbly. I can think of few things more venerable.

Thanks for this post, Daniel. I'm going to read it to my kids and show them the video too. I am currently homeschooling them because, after too many years of them being in the public school system, I started to see how it wasn't about supporting true growth and blossoming of individuals as cooperative and interconnected beings in an interconnected life, but was, rather, all about disconnection, fear, and learned dependence on a tenuous, imaginary economy. I read the book about you some time back and started reading your blog and I started thinking about how our entire "culture" and the education systems that support it teach most frequently to think about the future, and particularly what will be our future lack if we do not toe the consumerist line. I realized that, while it's all well and good to develop certain skills if that is the path that inspires a person, to run on a treadmill that negates one's passions in the present moment just for fear of some theoretical lack 20 years down the line is sheer insanity, yet we teach kids that this is a normal state of affairs. Unfortunately, it is normal in our society. While we're not as a family living on no money, you've inspired an ethic and confidence in me that all of us, including children, should see the tremendous wealth in what IS, right this minute. If I could teach my kids to happily live on nothing (financially speaking) I'd consider it a bigger accomplishment than teaching them to get a $200K per year job that makes them miserable. Schools would rather teach them to make the $200K per year job (but even that windfall, the schools very well know, is only reserved for a select few). Thanks for your inspiration and continued dedication to Truth.

Thank you for this kind & thoughtful comment, Stacy. I feel very encouraged that you don't automatically discount these principles just because you have a family. You can do and think up creative ways for families to live simply & sustainably so in ways that I cannot fully do, and not be afraid to teach it to your children. I am always hoping more families take the simple life to heart, breaking away from faith in the money system, transitioning, and blazing new trails.

I let your comment slip by me. No, I don't have a backup plan. And I'm okay with that. The worst that could happen is natural selection could take me out, and I'm fine with that. It's going to get ever one of us, sooner or later, whether we resist it or not. It's done us good for millions of years, brought us to where we are, and it's only when we've tried to get past it that we've created disaster. Accepting it is called faith. Natural Selection is the mind of God, but really doesn't care what you call it.

If these people who think that the only way to earn a living is to compete over money they obviously do not study enough and are simply ignorant. One who studies law for purely knowledge purposes and not to become a lawyer or make money from it (as I have done for years now) will eventually discover that our own judiciary (courts) view religion and the worship of it as 'lessening the burdens of government'.

Unfortunately churches and religions which mix religion with money and/or property are ignorant or choose to ignore that by virtue of their use of money and property they burden government, and so in effect they are not producing nore than they consume, however, this does not stop both the government and the courts maintaining that by virtue of their religious worship and practice they are entitled to tax exemptions. It might seem a hypocritical thing to do to reward a church with tax exemptione and therefore money, but that is probably because that is the only thing they can reward them with.

However the point I am making is that even the government recognizes that there are other ways to earn your place in the world other than convincing others they need to buy your product.

On this I have emailed you a model which I believe not only comforms to every religion but also enables one to co exist alongside everyone else and to raise a family, and NOT use money.

I have presented it to many people but none of these people seem to see things the way you do. You might be about the only person on earth who might actually see, after I present it to you, what I am seeing

I studied business at a top 10 university in the US and have ample life experience and common sense to know that no one really earns anything. People get self-righteous about how hard they worked and how much credit they deserve for it, but in reality, they forget that they inherited many things they did not "earn", e.g., air, water, language, civilization, learning through OTHER'S "EARNED" experience, and I can go on and on. Suelo inherited some knowledge that made him see through the bs system we all support and put ourselves through. Losing sleep to get up to work/slavery every day just to mostly produce waste. Just look at the infinite examples of how broken this system is. It's run by liars, murderers, and very very sick individuals that want to cause harm to us all and the world in general just so they can feed their sick addictions. You can't blame Suelo for not wanting to "earn" his keep in such a system, pay taxes to help fund wars that bomb starving poor people just to steal and waste the planet's resources for imaginary money.

Sir, I really admire your courage and respect your choice and as long as you do no harm everything is alright. Money comes from our greatest gift: conscious choice, freedom (money is coined freedom). the whole life is about making choices and without reward certain things would not get done, therefore money. I believe all extremes are wrong in some way. Not making some great experiences, because of attachement to certain beliefs may prove wrong as well...

Jesus driving moneychangers & merchants from the Temple.

Sadhu of India

Call me Suelo

I lived totally without cents since Autumn of 2000 (except for a couple months in 2001) until the Spring of 2016, when I started caring for my aging parents, managing their finances. For 15 years I didn't use or accept money or conscious barter - nor did I take food stamps or other government dole. My philosophy has been to use only what is freely given or discarded and what is already present and already running (whether or not I existed).
I don't see money as evil or good: how can illusion be evil or good? But I don't see heroin or meth as evil or good, either. Which is more addictive and debilitating, money or meth?
Attachment to illusion makes you illusion, makes you not real. Attachment to illusion is called idolatry, called addiction. I simply got tired of acknowledging as real this most common world-wide belief called money! I simply got tired of being unreal. Money is one of those intriguing things that seems real and functional because 2 or more people believe it is real & functional!